Weird Historical Events: The Great Emu War
Public DomainA man holding one of the emus killed during the “war.”
The Great Emu War of 1932 is possibly the most absurd military campaign in history — largely because the birds won.
The trouble began when World War I veterans who had been granted farmland on the edges of Australia’s harsh Outback faced an invasion of approximately 20,000 six-foot-tall emus that emerged from the country’s interior seeking food and water during a drought.
The emus devastated the veterans’ wheat fields, and when rifle fire proved insufficient, the farmers appealed to the Minister of Defense, Sir George Pearce. In response, Pearce deployed Major Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery and two other soldiers with two Lewis machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. Fox Movietone even sent a cinematographer to document the weird historical event and what they assumed would be a swift victory. They were sorely mistaken.
The campaign was a disaster from the start.
Public DomainAustralian soldiers resting during the Great Emu War.
In the first engagement near Campion on Nov. 2, 1932, the emus scattered chaotically when the soldiers began shooting, sprinting out of the machine guns’ range. Then, on Nov. 4, the men attempted to ambush 1,000 emus gathered at a dam. However, their Lewis gun jammed within minutes, allowing the birds to escape. Mounting a gun on a truck proved equally futile, as the vehicle couldn’t maintain accuracy or speed over the rough terrain while the emus ran at 30 miles per hour.
After the first week, Meredith reported “no casualties” on his side but up to 500 birds killed — though the true number may actually have been fewer than 50, according to some sources. The emus also proved to be stunningly resilient. Sydney’s Sunday Herald reported in 1953 that Meredith had once stated, “If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face any army in the world. They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks.”
By the time operations ceased on Dec. 10, Meredith claimed his men had killed 986 emus using 9,860 rounds — 10 bullets per bird. He also claimed that they’d wounded an additional 2,500 emus that later died from their injuries, though this has never been confirmed.
The government wisely declined future military interventions, instead instituting bounty programs that proved far more effective, with nearly 58,000 emus claimed in 1934 alone.
